988: NFL Draft - Utilizing Front Office Decision-Making

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and this is episode 988 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. The Late-Round Prospect Guide went out on Saturday night to anyone who pre-ordered, and it's obviously still available for anyone who wants to order. There's now 165 pages of information on prospects from this year's class. There's rankings, there's information on what goes into my models, and so much more. And now you get takes on all these players with landing spots in mind. So make sure to check it out over on lateraound.com. Now, with the draft over, rather than immediately doing a show on my post-draft rankings, I like to take a second and just sort of analyze what we just watched. Doing the prospect guides each year now, I'm essentially in my office for three straight days as the draft is going on. I'm inputting draft capital into the ZAP model, I'm rewriting tons and tons of blurbs in the guide, but I'm also just taking notes. I'm jotting down some things that I find interesting as the draft unfolds. Because I always find the draft very telling. We don't get many instances during the year where teams are just openly taking action to show us, as fans who aren't part of their front office, what they're thinking. We can sit here all day and say that some team doesn't have good running back depth. But if that team does nothing to address the position in the draft, it tells us that they generally don't agree with that assessment. And that matters when we're projecting fantasy football. So again, rather than talking about my rankings today, which you can get in the prospect guide, I'll do all that next week. Instead, I want to do some reading between the lines. I want to look at how teams actually acted during the draft to see what kind of takeaway we can find from those actions for fantasy football purposes. Because like I said, we learned a lot over the three days of drafting last week. So with that in mind, let's get to item number one.

This running back class was looked at as having the potential to be historically good. Now, I talked about how strong these guys looked in the zap model pre-draft. I was ready for backfields to be really shaken up. And while we did get that a little bit, we didn't get it to the degree that many thought. Now, one thing I do want to note here is that every single year, literally every year, going into a draft, we always think through this lens of perfection. That only the most needy running back teams will actually get running backs. Well, everyone else won't. That landing spots will just perfectly align from pre to post draft. That literally never happens. I think with this draft, there were some spots where we were like, okay, yeah, I can definitely see that team taking a running back early. But there were a lot of spots where we said they might take a back, maybe they won't take a back. For example, I think everyone figured that Cleveland would go in the running back direction. They had a really rough depth chart. Same with Denver. Both of those teams, they got their running backs. And then there were the probablys like the Chargers, the Steelers, the Patriots, and so on. The one team who shocked me the most who didn't go the running back direction, at least with any significant draft capital, was Chicago. Their depth chart entering the draft consists of Deandre Swift, Roshan Johnson, and Travis Homer. It wasn't until round 7 when they actually addressed the running back position. They drafted Kyle Monungay. And according to the ZAP model, Monungay has a ton of red flags. It's scary to not love the player when the situation is so so good, and the scheme should be so so good, but I do question the talent profile. So Deandre Swift and Roshan Johnson, they were big winners from this draft. Maybe they make a move, maybe they trade for someone, but right now, both those guys were winners in my eyes. Now, there were other teams like that too. The Bengals didn't address the position until they got a Matt Waldman favorite, Taj Brooks, in round 6 That was a decent win for Chase Brown. The Chiefs were also a team who at least had a reasonable depth chart, but they could have easily added more bodies. They didn't do anything until round 7 That's when they got the smaller pass catcher in Brichard Smith. And then the Cowboys, that's a huge one. The Cowboys had Javontae Williams and Miles Sanders atop their depth chart going into the draft. Their first running back pick was a smaller back in Jaden Blue in round 5 Then they took Phil Maffa, a massive bruiser in round 7 Now the Zap model does really like Jaden Blue, but it's still not a lot of draft capital to be spent on a running back. And to me, this wasn't just a situation where teams sat back and they said, oh, this is a deep draft class. We can wait on the position. I think some teams did that because we saw what happened when day 3 started. We had guys like Bashall Tutin and Kam Scataboo go early in round 4 And then the Rams got Jarquez Hunter later in the fourth round. And then there's Trevor Etienne and Woody Marks who got drafted in round 4 too. A lot of those teams, they likely said, OK, we don't need to spend a premium pick on the running back position. And the position is deep. So let's just wait until day 3 And then they immediately reacted on day 3 But I think this comes down to the NFL not liking these running backs quite as much as the public did. And the consensus. Consider this. Over the last couple of months, I've done a lot of talking about how I'm using NFL mock draft databases big board data. How I'm looking at where consensus mock drafts listed a player and comparing that to his actual draft capital. And using Chase Stewart's draft value chart, I can kind of find the value gained or lost by a team for a particular pick. So for instance, Caleb Johnson this year, he went 83rd overall to Pittsburgh, but the big board had him closer to 60 The difference in value there, according to Stewart's chart, was over two points. In this year's class, there were six running backs who were in that plus two point range, meaning teams had huge values with them. Those guys were Johnson, Dylan Sampson, Devin Neal, DJ Giddens, Damian Martinez, and Breshard Smith. And maybe you're thinking, okay, well, this is just showing you that it was a deep class, that it was a good class, and teams pass on those running backs because they knew it was a deep class. And maybe that's true, but the class we always compare this one to is the 2017 one, right? In 2017, there was only one running back with that kind of value. It was Dalvin Cook. When looking at all draft classes since 2016, which is where this data dates back to, the 2025 class had the most running backs whose teams gained two or more draft value points when they drafted them. And it was second when looking at teams who gained one or more point in value. We're never going to have a real answer to this. Like I'm sure the answer is somewhere in the middle. I'm sure there's something to the idea that teams kind of just go off of a big board, but there's also something to the idea that teams will just wait when classes appear deeper. I'm sure it's because some teams do do that while other teams just don't care as much. Like Sean Payton wanted RJ Harvey. The Broncos loved him. They may have reached for him based on where he might have otherwise gone, but that's how a lot of teams operate. They don't want to miss out on their guy who they think is going to make a big impact. My feeling about the 2025 draft was that it was definitely a really good running back class overall, but I think I and many others liked the class a little bit more than the NFL did. When looking at things in some. I mean, think of it this way. If teams really did just wait and wait and wait when positions were really strong in the draft, then wouldn't that mean that we would see more day three hits at running back than we actually see? Since 2011, we've averaged 1.2 day three running backs per class, giving fantasy managers 14 or more PPR points per game, an RB2 season. And that's in one of their first three years in the league, not just their rookie season. That's not a high number at all when you consider the number of running backs who get picked on day three. If teams were just waiting to get a value, even if deep running back classes happened like five times over the last 15 years, wouldn't we get more day three hits than that? What this all means, though, is that I do think there's a chance that we see more day three picks emerge this year, just based on my own evaluation of this class. But once again, draft capital does usually do the talking, and that's kind of scary. That, to me, was the biggest fantasy football story of this entire draft, which is why I'm spending so much time talking about it. It was this great running back class that didn't torpedo quite as many backfields as we initially thought. There were definitely some backfields that were torched. Don't get me wrong. Najee Harris got huge competition, which by the way, I warned you guys about the instant he signed with the Chargers. But Jalen Warren got some competition, Ramandre Stevenson, the entire Broncos backfield, the Jags backfield, Tyrone Tracy. They all received decent competition. I think many thought that there might be one or two more teams added to that list. The Bears being one of them for sure. But what about like the Titans, the Bengals, the Chiefs, the Cowboys? There was less movement there than expected. And it's going to be fascinating to see how some of those teams day three picks, how they get elevated in rookie drafts. Now I have my favorites, but there are some where I'm left scratching my head. There were some day three running back picks where I was asking myself, why didn't that team do more to fill the position?